³And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.

The phrase “He made purification of sins” sounds odd to our modern ears. We understand to some degree what forgiveness of sins is. We know that sin is “missing the mark” (Greek: hamartia), coming up short of God’s glory (Rom. 3:23), transgressing God’s Law (1 John 3:4), and committing an offense against God. In what sense do we need purification of our sins?

The idea of purification is rooted in the OT sacrificial system, which pictures things that are holy in earthly terms as being pure and spotlessly clean, contrasted with all that is not holy and therefore viewed as not clean or dirty. In Biblical terminology, making something holy was to remove it from mundane, everyday life and set it apart for God’s particular use. Sinning against God was the ultimate action that caused a person to be unclean; for inherent in sin is acting precisely against God’s purposes.

So, the imagery communicates that to come into God’s presence and make a sacrifice, one must be ceremonially cleansed as well as the items involved in worship (furniture, incense, altars, etc.):

And according to the Law … all things are cleansed with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. Therefore it was necessary for the copies of the things in the heavens to be cleansed with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. (Heb. 9:22-23)

The term “copies” refers to the temple and the entire sacrificial system, that God had showed Moses in a vision of what heaven was like (see Heb. 8:5).

In comparing Christ’s superiority to the Jewish priesthood, the Law was woefully inadequate for making anything permanently and perfectly holy:

Otherwise, would [animal] not have ceased to be offered, because the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have had consciousness of sins? (Heb. 10:2)

In Christ, everything has changed—like a photo of a person being discarded because the person in the picture is now present. The difference is enormous; Christ, as our perfect High Priest, has made the sacrifice for our sins to permanently set us apart as acceptable to God, giving us full, open, and welcome access into His holy presence:

Since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. (Heb. 10:21–22)

How great is that! God has invited us into His holy temple, as it were, into His throne room. Without His forgiving us of our sins, we have no right or confidence to bring our worship to Him. Our worship would be, at best, a fraud, purely going through outward motions—and utterly unacceptable to God. But because Christ has purified us of our sin, nothing can hinder our worship except unbelief in what He has done. We are entirely accepted because He has set us apart, sanctified us, and cleansed us from the dirt and disqualification of sin. Yes, praise Him forever, for He has “made purification of sins.”

Lord, I praise You for purifying me from my sins, once and for all, forever. As Your Word says for me to do, I come to You with the full assurance that You welcome my worship.